LONDON-The fixed wireless market in Israel is set for a period of heightened activity. The Communications Ministry submitted regulations to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in early May that will pave the way for a number of fixed wireless licenses to be issued.
The regulations allowing fixed wireless access in Israel are due to be passed within the next few months, although a specific date is not yet known. Once the regulations are passed by the Knesset, a tender will be issued inviting companies registered in Israel and in which an Israeli citizen has at least a 20-percent stake, to bid for a license to supply fixed wireless access.
Candidates will be required to have at least US$60 million in capital, and under the current plan, potential suppliers will be narrowed down to a short list of three. Successful bidders will then be contracted to supply fixed wireless infrastructure to at least 15 out of 50 regions across Israel.
Once allocated, the licenses will cover the 3.5 GHz and 26 GHz frequencies and will aim to extend communications access to areas outside the country’s main population centers. As President and CEO of Floware Wireless Systems Amon Yacoby explained, “Fixed wireless is the part of the telecoms market that deals with the last mile.”
Applications include frame relay, Ethernet, high-speed Internet, Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) and plain old telephone service (POTS) for a range of high-bandwidth data and advanced voice services.
In anticipation of the fixed wireless licenses, a number of carriers have been gearing up to offer fixed wireless services, such as broadband solutions. Floware has been involved in trialing its solutions in conjunction with Israeli carriers such as Eurocom.
“They (Eurocom) have done some serious work during the past year,” Yacoby said, adding that Eurocom has been involved in trials in the Israeli town of Ariel.
Israeli vendors
Although fixed wireless services are not yet available in Israel itself, Israeli companies are among those at the forefront of developing fixed wireless technology. For its part, Floware has developed the WALKair system, which operates in major fixed wireless frequencies such as 3.5 GHz, 10.5 GHz and 26 GHz.
According to Floware, the advantage of this is that the operator can make use of both frequencies to achieve more effective network coverage. The 26 GHz band offers high-capacity transmission over a shorter distance, making it ideal for densely populated areas, while the 3.5 GHz frequency provides longer transmission distances, but lower capacity. Combining the two frequencies reduces the number of base stations required, therefore reducing overall project cost.
WALKair is a broadband point-to-multipoint fixed wireless access system geared primarily toward new operators entering the market. The system enables carriers to operate independently of a wireline incumbent as it avoids the need to lease capacity from an incumbent’s copper infrastructure. A WALKair base station is capable of supporting around 2,000 business customers, each with a 2 Megabits per second (Mbps) Internet Protocol (IP) or frame relay connection, or alternatively, it can allow ISDN and voice services to be shared among thousands of POTS and ISDN lines using Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation (DBA) technology.
Also in the running for fixed wireless market share is ECI Telecom’s InnoWave subsidiary with two fixed wireless solutions in the form of MultiGain Wireless and WaveGain. MultiGain is a fixed wireless local loop solution based on ECI’s frequency hopping
CDMA technology and supports a range of frequencies from 800 MHz to 3.5 GHz.
The technology was chosen by Turkish carrier Turk Telecom, which awarded InnoWave a contract valued at US$13.5 million in third-quarter 1999 to deploy its MultiGain Wireless system in three phases.
WaveGain, meanwhile, is a wideband point-to-multipoint system that offers support for both packet and circuit switching, unlike most wideband solutions that support one or the other.
